


to grow in all the places people thought you never would

by notorious



Category: Motherland: Fort Salem (TV)
Genre: F/F, abigail listens, and learns, and oh boy does she yearn, tally teaches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25202842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notorious/pseuds/notorious
Summary: to stop and smell the flowers tells more about a person than many things you’d think to look to first.
Relationships: Abigail Bellweather/Tally Craven
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	to grow in all the places people thought you never would

**Author's Note:**

> this one’s soft and sweet and perhaps the tiniest bit sad. that’s it. aha. actually edited, for a change. title from a quote i found on google images??? no idea who wrote it. enjoy.

Abigail’s not emotional like Tally is, not outwardly.

She stopped wearing her heart on her sleeve years ago (Petra’s fault, but she doesn’t like to think of it in those terms) and has kept it under heavy-duty lock and key ever since. Even she herself is unsure of how to access it at times. Once a protector, always a protector. It’s only natural.

Tally scared her a little at first. Not a soul in Bellweather country has ever been as sweet and open and _real_ as Tally is. Took Abigail a minute to get used to affection for affection’s sake instead of strictly as reward for tangible achievements. Took her even longer to begin to understand how someone could _not_ think of life in strict terms of the military.

When Tally stops to admire flowers Abigail stops to wonder if they hold any medicinal properties that can be utilized in combat. When Tally hums mindlessly Abigail always thinks to ask if it’s a new seed she’s perfecting, but never does. Where Tally sees the military as a period of her life, Abigail sees it as the entirety of her world. Abigail will live and die by her service and Tally will live and —

no.

She won’t think of Tally in terms of death. Feels too much like a betrayal of someone who is nothing but light, and Abigail will not dishonor her. Not as long as she lives, because Tally deserves better than to be reduced to ifs, ands, and buts.

Tally will live her life in only the way she wishes, and wishes to a girl like that are wondrous things.

All Abigail can do is stand by her side and learn with her. About her. From her. _For_ her. It is the very least she deserves.

Like when Tally crouches down by a patch of purple flowers and cups her hands tenderly around a blossom. It’s late August and nearly dinner time but they’re still out walking because Tally loves summer evenings and Abigail loves to see her happy.

“Mmm.” Tally hums. “Big smell. Get down here.”

Abigail sinks down at the redhead’s side, leans in, sniffs. Hums her own sound of approval before dropping down to sit.

“New England Aster,” Tally says.

“Tell me about it.” Abigail smiles fondly. “I know you want to.”

“It’s both a relaxant and a stimulant.”

“Double trouble, huh?”

Tally eases onto the grass beside Abigail. Their knees bump, their shoulders brush, and Abigail wishes more than anything to never be further away from her than this. For Tally is not the calm before the storm, but the peace that follows; the eerie quiet that signifies safety, that tells you _it’s all right_ , _you can come out now_ , _I’ve got you_.

Home is a bit of a foreign concept to Abigail. Though she’s always had one, always had a place to return to, it’s never felt anything other than temporary. Perhaps because her fate was always in the military, despite the requirements and the time it called for her to abandon the place in which she spent her childhood. She still sees her mother, and others, as this army was built on the backs of Bellweathers generations ago, but Fort Salem doesn’t feel like home yet either.

“See, _traditionally_ herbalists only used the roots of the plant to achieve those effects,” Tally says, gazing happily at the purple flowers. “But the petals and the leaves work just the same. Often better.”

When Tally reaches out to stroke her fingertips over thin petals Abigail wonders for the first time in her young life what exactly it would be like to be a flower. Mostly she muses on what it would be like to be touched like that. Delicately. Tenderly. With pure admiration and respect. To be touched in such a way, by Tally, Abigail thinks, would take her higher than salva ever could.

She bumps her knee against Tally’s and leaves it there. “Tell me more.”

“The Aster has an affinity for the lungs,” Tally says. “That’s where she does her best work. Decongestant. Bronchodilator. Can lessen an asthmatic’s dependence on their inhaler when used regularly as a tincture over time.”

“She, huh?”

“Yes, she. Want to know the story of her name?”

Abigail looks at her watch. Dinner started four minutes ago, ends in twenty-six. “You don’t want dinner?”

“Some things are more important,” Tally says.

And Abigail believes her.

Tells her, “Tell me how the Aster got her name, Tal.”

“Do you know about Astraea?”

She doesn’t.

So Tally tells her.

Greek goddess, daughter of Astraeus and Eos. Virgin goddess of justice, innocence, purity, and precision.

Abigail nods, begins to understand why these purple wildflowers mean so much to Tally.

“Now, _her_ name means ‘starry night,’ or ‘star maiden,’ right?”

“Yes,” Abigail agrees like she’s fluent in ancient Greek.

Night slowly seeps into Salem as Tally and Abigail sit side by side before a patch of flowers. The sun sinks, the sky goes red, then pink, and it’s something like sherbet when Tally tells Abigail just how this incredible little flower got its name.

“Story goes,” Tally says, quieter now, sort of like it’s a secret, sort of like Abigail is the only one she trusts with such valuable information, “that one night Astraea was so upset by how few stars there were in the sky that she began to cry, and as she wept her tears fell to the ground and turned into star-shaped flowers. So they called the flower Aster, meaning ‘star,’ after Astraea.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow.”

“Who knew tears could turn into something so beautiful.”

They don’t go to dinner. They’ve got snacks in the dorm, they’ll get by just fine. They just sit, sit and watch the sun set the rest of the way.

At some point, Abigail doesn’t remember exactly when, only that her breath catches in her throat and her world feels like it’s cracking open, Tally lays her head on her shoulder. And she tries not to focus too hard on how the soft wind licks at Tally’s hair and sends it tickling up under Abigail’s jaw, or how beneath the budding starlight Tally is beginning to look quite like a goddess herself.

“I think tears hold their own magic,” Tally says after a while.

They’ve gotten closer. Not on purpose. Tally’s got her arm looped through Abigail’s, their hands clasped, fingers intertwined, and Abigail thinks she could maybe go for some of that New England Aster right about now. Although her trouble with breathing doesn’t feel dangerous, just feels enveloping. Like Tally’s aura is swallowing her whole, or that for the first time in her life she’s experiencing a gravitational pull stronger than that of the earth beneath her feet.

“As do we,” Abigail says.

Tally stills at her side. Abigail doesn’t have to wait long to learn what she’s thinking.

“Do you think we’ll ever create anything as beautiful as a flower?”

Doesn’t take long, either, for Abigail to have her answer. It’s so simple she barely has to think about it past the fact that Tally has built within her, Abigail Bellweather, a new foundation to replace the one slapped together by Bellweather ideals and military supremacy.

She doesn’t know when exactly it started to grow, only that its branches stretch to every accessible part of her heart and soul. It is new life but it is not death by any means; it is growth built upon that which already exists. Abigail had always been staunch and steadfast before Tally Craven wandered into her life. And she doesn’t know what she is now, but she feels lighter. Any change in morals had not been conscious.

Like when they stopped by the Asters and Abigail’s first thought was what they meant to Tally, not how the military could utilize them. Hadn’t even thought to think about that until Tally started listing off their medicinal properties, like she knew the parts Abigail would like to hear most without her having to ask.

She’ll realize one day, but not today, that through Tally she has learned to just _be_. Not to be what her mother expects, not to be what she believes she needs to live up to, but to simply exist. Because just to live and breathe and exist in the world beside one another is more than either one of them will ever need.

Right now all Abigail knows is that with Tally, she is home.And that means more to her than anything else.

So.

“I think you already have,” she says.


End file.
